Mister Slime's DS Daddy

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Delphine's Flashback designer brings his first DS game to life.

By Craig Harris

In just a few short weeks, Southpeak Interactive will release Mister Slime, a clever touch-screen action game where you maneuver a blob around a side-scrolling environment by stretching his limbs from post to post. The game was developed by Paul Cuisset, best known for his work on the classic action adventure Flashback. We recently had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Cuisset about his involvement in this Nintendo DS product.

IGN: Give us a little history. What games have you worked on in the past?

Paul Cuisset : I created my first game in 1983 (I was 19) and It was called Phoenix. I then created a few other games before working at Delphine Software, one of the main French game studios of the time.

There, I released a game called Future Wars: Time Travelers which was one of the first adventure games. The game was a success and later I became head of the studio. I worked on several games before finding what I think was a good compromise between advanced technology (for the time) and creativity. Several of the games we created then were quite revolutionary for the time and I'm proud that we had both a commercial success and good reviews. Among those games were Flashback (1993), Fade to Black (1996), DarkStone (1999) or the Moto Racer series (1997-2003).

Funny enough, I think Flashback was one the very first, if not the first, game to use cinematics. I then worked on different projects and created a new studio called VectorCell and I still have fun creating video games.

IGN: Mister Slime reminds us a bit of Donkey Kong King of Swing. Where'd the inspiration for this game come from?

Paul Cuisset : Basically, the core gameplay idea came from the guys at Lexis Numérique (the French Studio who created Missing: since January and Evidence). We worked together on Mister Slime and I brought the storyline and my vision of the gameplay.

IGN: What's was the development like for Mister Slime? How big was the team and how long did you spend on developing the title?

Paul Cuisset : We worked eight months with a team of 10 people.

IGN: Of everything that's going on in Mister Slime, what are you most proud of?

Paul Cuisset : I think what I'm most proud of is the behavior of Mister Slime. The purpose was to have a hero that reacts in a very realistic way, and to do that, we had to implement a complex physics engine to simulate elasticity and interactions with the environment. For instance, when Slimy carries heavy rocks, you really feel the weight of it. My challenge was to implement something quite complex (I haven't seen anything like this on the DS before) without bringing complexity. Everything had to be simple.

Stretch and pull.

IGN: Is this your first handheld game? Or have you worked on other portable projects?

Paul Cuisset : As head of Delphine Software, we released many handheld games, but Mister Slime is the first I directly worked on.

IGN: I understand you were one of the designers responsible for the classic Flashback. Have you given any thoughts on reviving that game for a sequel or follow-up on the Nintendo DS?

Paul Cuisset : In fact, I was the lead and only designer of the game. I also wrote as the author and scenarist. As for a sequel, I prefer developing new universes and concepts.

IGN: What other projects are you working on?

Paul Cuisset : I'm currently working on a quite innovative survival horror title for the PS3, the 360 and the PC. I do my best to bring my vision to this genre and bring some fresh air, although I now some previous tremendous games as established benchmarks. I also worked on Eric Viennot's new game (PS3, 360). Eric Viennot is co-founder of French Studio Lexis Numérique and the author of games such as Missing: since January, Evidence or the Uncle Albert series. I'm totally enthusiastic about his concept and I do believe it's going to make some noise.